The scope of the project is to promote vertical farming as a sustainable agricultural method for WB countries through strengthening the interlinkage between the VET sector and business sector. The project aims to address the needs of VET institutes located in third countries of the WB in developing concrete links with the labour market of the emerging VF sector, so as to offer VET courses that are both attractive to learners and reflect the requirements of investors of the sector.

The focus will be placed on developing VET trainers’ vocational and technical competences in decision support systems (DSS) to enable them to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed framework as a valid solution for the simulation, assessment, and optimization of VF systems that correspond to the needs of the business sector, hence addressing environmental sustainability, economically viability and digital transformation.

The project proposed solution is a decision support system (DSS), compiling lessons learned from the EU VET sector with an adaptable economic model to produce financial risk assessment under uncertain scenarios in the WB region. Such a tool could aid the formation of a robust business model with only partial information available and inform financial investors to make more reliable investments, increasing confidence levels. This is needed for the industry to grow sustainably as the technology begins to mature and should evolve quickly with the most recent advancements. A start-up has an excessive amount of decisions to make around systems selection, zoning codes, compliance, location, pricing, and environmental control. The proposed DSS aims to centralise this information and simplify the business planning process.

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

O1: Support the exposure of WB-VET trainers and staff to DSS approaches that establish flexible and interactive links between VET and the labour market.

O2: Build the capacity of WB-VET institutes to incorporate CEA labour market needs to their training provision.

O3: Enhance the employability potential of WB-VET learners through the improved capacity of WB- VET to provide VET courses and learning resources that correspond to CEA sector’s requirements.